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Sister Maria Gladys Gonzalez

Sister Gladys Gonzalez, M.M.

Current Ministry Location-Brazil

Sister Gladys is a trained teacher with twenty years of experience in secondary school education and ten years in a rural area with village women. Her specialty is integrating education in holistic health, spirituality and the arts.

Sister María Gladys was born in Herveo, Tolima, Colombia. At the age of sixteen, when she was still in high school, Sister María Gladys entered the Franciscan Sisters, completed her university studies and taught high school for twenty years. Then she felt a call to serve in other lands. In Pereira, Colombia she was Co-founder of “Xaverian Missionaries,” a new community. She was asked to go to the U.S. to study missiology at Maryknoll.

In 1992, Sister Gladys joined the Maryknoll Sisters, and was assigned to Tanzania in 1995 to provide education for rural women at Murigha Girls School. Murigha is a boarding school for about 140 students, a four year program with self-reliance as a basic principle. She resonated with that and initiated “Creative Community,” an income-generating art project for the students and village women. In 2004 the Sisters turned the school over to a Tanzanian religious congregation who continue this vital education.

Sister Gladys was then appointed the Maryknoll Sisters Renewal Coordinator at the Maryknoll Sisters Center where she shared her many gifts for four years.

In 2008, she returned to Tanzania collaborating in pastoral and educational projects in Morogoro as well as responding to the emergency situation in Kenya. For six months in 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya, Sister Gladys focused on peace-building and conflict transformation as part of a Maryknoll Sisters peace team that seeks to strengthen relationships among East Africa’s diverse peoples.

In 2016, Sister Gladys was assigned to Brazil where she works at a Holistic Healing Center run by the Maryknoll Sisters.